


The Green of Gretna II

by intravenusann



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Regency, Duelling, Eloping, F/M, Group Marriage, M/M, Marriage, Multi, Regency Romance, Space Opera
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 07:35:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6109666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intravenusann/pseuds/intravenusann
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A "Weird Star Wars Space Regency AU" wherein Rey Skywalker, the apprentice of the last living Jedi, and Finn Organa, the ward of a legendary general and princess, run away to elope on an Outer Rim planet against Republican laws which dictate that they are too young to be wed. Commander Poe Dameron, the finest pilot in the Resistance and a friend of them both, is sent to spare their reputations and rescue them from this mistake. Things do not go quite as Poe intends.</p>
<p>Inspired by Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Green of Gretna II

**Author's Note:**

> I owe everything to Tumblr user [margotkim](http://margotkim.tumblr.com/) and [this post](http://margotkim.tumblr.com/post/139849972301/weird-star-wars-space-regency-au-where-finn-isnt). But I was also very inspired by Tumblr user [therealmcgee's SW regency AU art](http://therealmcgee.tumblr.com/tagged/sw-regency-au). Especially Rey's dress!!

It was a matter of some interest how a girl of nineteen standard years came to be under the study of Jedi Luke Skywalker while, concurrently, a soldier of the First Order came to be a ward of General Leia Organa. Many speculated that these matters were related as Master Skywalker and General Organa were themselves related. Or, perhaps, some wondered whether it had to do with the most unfortunate fall into ruin of Organa’s only son, who also had studied under Master Skywalker).

How a scavenger girl in rags became the apprentice of the galaxy’s most famous living Jedi and an enemy soldier became the son of a decorated Rebel general did not have too much to do with the dissolution of Ben Solo — that is a story for another time — but this did not stop the gossips, as it would be easier to make snow fall on Jakku than to silence the tongues of Coruscant's gossips.

Under Skywalker’s tutelage, the girl called Rey took her Master’s name as everyone must have a name. And the soldier called Finn took Organa’s name as she welcomed him into her family, of which there was only herself and her brother left.

So it was Rey Skywalker and Finn Organa who together defied the expectations of a First Order solider and the long-abused code of the Jedi when they fled Coruscant for the Outer Rim. The Outer Rim, of course, being those planets where neither the steely fist of First Order rule nor the bureaucracy of Republican democracy has any control. The place to which Rey and Finn fled specifically was called Gretna II, the verdant moon of silvery Gretna.

Master Skywalker found the letter from his apprentice when he awoke and went immediately to his sister, who had just arisen to find a similar letter in place of her ward.

“Well,” General Organa said. “We must do something about this.”

“I was too hard on her,” Skywalker said. “Or too permissive.”

“Young hearts will do as they do,” Organa said. “I remember when I was Rey’s age. Were we not in the middle of a war, I am sure my reputation would have suffered even more from my circumstances. But victory against the Empire forgives such indiscretions.”

Skywalker did not repeat the ideas passed along by gossips that Organa’s rashness and poor choice of husband — a mere Corellian smuggler — contributed to the dissolution of her firstborn son. But even a Master Jedi had heard such base, slanderous gossip.

“We cannot allow the same to befall Rey and Finn,” Master Skywalker said.

“No, we cannot,” General Organa said. “But I have a plan for how we can retrieve my ward and your apprentice from their errors — without any loss of honor on their part.”

How much honor a scavenger girl and enemy soldier might have was not the sort of question General Organa or Master Skywalker asked. These were their own: two young orphans long battered by and now swept up in a war for the Galaxy itself.

The brother and sister regarded each other in silence, well aware why two such as Rey and Finn might find comfort in each other so great they would seek to marry though neither of them were of legal age. They had themselves been so young when they met Han Solo.

Now upon Coruscant, Rey and Finn had not yet reached the standard five and twenty standard years required before legal marriage. But on Gretna II there were no such restrictions. Whether Coruscant would recognize the marriage was not of consideration, because even if it were recognized it would be quite the scandal that two people so young and of such low birth and now high standing had eloped. General Organa felt a certain kind of headache which only incipient gossip could bring.

“How will you do that?” Master Skywalker asked, unable to ascertain his sister’s plan from mere glances.

“I will send a pilot, the best pilot in the Resistance’s Starfighter Fleet,” General Organa said. “My best pilot.”

“And you trust him with this task?” Master Skywalker asked, as he was a pilot in his own right — though it had been some standard years since he had last flown a Starfighter.

“I trust him with my own life, as I trusted his mother,” General Organa said.

General Organa called upon her protocol droid C-3PO, who was quite scandalized by the sudden departure of both apprentice and ward.

“Gretna II? Yes, Princess — I mean General, of course they would travel to such a place,” C-3PO remarked. “No doubt because of how fondly the General spoke of her own wedding to Master Han Solo on the same such moon.”

General Organa sighed, a very familiar sigh, which escaped her bosom such that she might find some scrap of patience which remained there.

“Just go fetch me Commander Dameron, C-3PO,” she said. “And be discreet about it.”

The protocol droid carried itself out of the General’s personal quarters and toward the Resistance’s Naval Barracks and was joined on its mission by the astromech R2-D2, which was sent by Master Skywalker to ensure this most delicate mission was completed.

“What a delight to see you, my friend, though it is under such circumstances,” C-3PO said. “Have you heard about our friends Master Finn and Mistress Rey? How unfortunate indeed.”

The astromech told his protocol droid friend to be quiet — though not in a particularly genteel way.

“My word!” the protocol droid declared, but carried on in silence.

At the door to Commander Dameron’s quarters, the two droids were met by a third, the astromech BB-8. It inquired what its friends were doing here at such an early hour and informed them that its master had not yet risen.

“Please, BB-8, if you would be so kind, the general has need of Master Dameron,” C-3PO explained.

The astromech BB-8 inquired as to why, but was told that such matters were classified. This was some disappointment for BB-8, but it was as happy as a droid can be to wake Master Dameron by _any means necessary_.

“I’m up! I’m up!” Commander Dameron cried, loud enough for the two droids outside the door to overhear.

The Starfighter pilot came to the door with his jacket half-open and his hair dashingly dishevelled, though a trio of droids may not be the best judge of what passes for dashing amongst humans. Still, the protocol droid C-3PO could not help but be reminded of the late Master Solo who was said to be quite dashing indeed.

In his buttons and stripes, Commander Dameron followed C-3PO and R2-D2 while his own BB-8 trailed behind him. None of the droids had divulged to him why he had been summoned to the office of General Organa before the light of the sun had yet risen over the silver surface of Coruscant. Fear gripped the commander by his perfect breast, for it could not be anything good at this hour. He feared it had something to do with the general’s ward or their enemies in the First Order. Perhaps it had to do with both?

When Commander Dameron arrived at the general’s personal quarters he found she already had a caller — her brother, Master Skywalker. Well aware that he stood before royalty and power, Commander Dameron’s tongue stilled in his mouth. He scarcely remembered to breathe for fear of embarrassing himself so early in the day.

“Poe,” General Organa said, as though she regarded Commander Dameron as close as her ward. “We need your help.”

The Resistance fleet’s best pilot could hardly turn away from such an entreaty when it was given by a general.

“What can I do?” Commander Dameron asked.

General Organa looked to her brother beside her.

“Finn and Rey have taken a ship and fled for Gretna II,” she said to the commander.

Poe Dameron sighed, a quite different sigh from that of General Organa earlier that same morn. He sighed with relief and a certain lightness — his friends were secure, though their reputations were perhaps in danger. A reputation was easier to salvage or regain than a life, Dameron knew.

“I can’t say that I am surprised,” the commander said, despite himself. The look that he received from Master Skywalker made him feel all of nine standard years old and quite embarrassed.

“Well, I mean, two young people who have fallen in love under such unique circumstances,” the commander said, as to explain himself.

He turned his half-lidded eyes toward General Organa and combed one hand through his dishevelled hair.

“And it is in the middle of a war.”

The general rolled her eyes at him, quite finished with decorum for the entire day though it was only dawn.

“No, I cannot say I am surprised either,” she said, “but still you must retrieve the both of them and bring them back — with their reputations intact.”

“Is that an order, general?” the commander asked.

General Organa crossed her arms over her bosom, amazed that she had to deal with such insolence and yet, again, unsurprised.

“Yes, _commander_ ,” she stressed. “It is.”

And so Commander Dameron hurried at once to his ship with his loyal astromech at his side. The two readied the vessel for flight with great haste and were soon departed from the surface of Coruscant with the coordinates for Gretna II in place.

The general did not speak untruths to her brother when she told him that Poe Dameron was the best pilot in the Resistance, but Rey Skywalker, as a Jedi apprentice, is not a member of the Resistance’s fleet. Also, she had the advantage of an entire night’s headstart. Thus it was, by the time that Commander Dameron reached the lush, green surface of Gretna II, the happy couple was before an officiant.

An expert on his feet as well as in the sky, Poe Dameron quickly found his way to the quaint building where Gretna II’s quickest weddings were performed. He feared already that he was too late — the couple would be wed and he would have failed not one but two of his own boyhood heroes. Surely, if it were himself run away to wed Finn Organa, he would have wasted no time before he took the soldier to bed and made ruinous work of each other’s bodies.

And were he to be completely honest and forthright, the commander must admit he would do much the same with Rey Skywalker. But such opportunities had not presented themselves to him. Of marriageable age, Poe Dameron was a highly sought after bachelor — but a bachelor he had sworn to always remain. His own parents’ marriage was the sort of love story which holovids can only aspire to convey in purity and beauty — and tragedy. Born a few years before the end of the war, such battles still robbed the Dameron family of a beloved wife and mother.

With this in his background, the commander has sworn to himself to be careful, to aspire only to such love as his father had for his mother and only to wed in peacetime.

Where this idyllic fantasy began to unravel was aboard a First Order vessel with the commander held prisoner — his life only spared through the kindness of an enemy soldier. While the commander thought his savoir had surely perished in the sands of Jakku, the soldier instead had found himself in the company of a scavenger girl. Such was the beginning of the story of Rey and Finn.

And, of course, Poe Dameron was not so dishonorable or rakish a man to stand in the way of a pure and beautiful love when he beheld it.

At least, not unless General Organa explicitly ordered him to stand in the way of that love. A commander had to follow orders — and this had nothing at all to do with any desirous and dissolute feelings Dameron yet held toward the happy couple.

“Wait!” the commander shouted, when he beheld the pair before their officiant’s desk.

He could only think how the two deserved an altar, a palatial setting in which to commit their lives to one another in love. His jealousy fell away from him and Poe thought only of how his friends should be celebrated in their love.

Surely they could wait a few more years, Rey Skywalker was nearly twenty and perhaps in another five they would achieve victory over the First Order.

“Poe!” the groom cried out.

“I told you,” the bride said, grasping both of Finn Organa’s hands in hers. “I told you that he would come.”

“I… what?” the commander asked.

The Jedi apprentice wore something soft and gauzy in place of her usual, dull-colored robes. Her arms were wrapped in some soft fabric that caught the light and shined. Beside her, Leia Organa’s ward wore a jacket which appeared quite familiar to Poe Dameron.

“Is that my suit?” he asked, causing color and heat to rise in Finn’s expression.

“Yes,” Finn confessed. “I’m sorry. We were going to tell you when we got back. But Rey said that you would know already — that you would come.”

“And you did!” Rey said, her smile so broad and bright.

She stepped away from the officiant, bearing Finn along with her.

“It’s not too late,” Rey Skywalker said, with all the wisdom of a Jedi and all the impishness of a girl.

“Yes, obviously,” Poe Dameron said. “And you’ll come directly back to Coruscant with me, as I promised the general.”

Beside his bride, Finn Organa groaned. “Of course, of course, the general. I’m going to be in _so_ much trouble when we get back.”

“Not if you return honorable,” Poe said. “With me.”

Where the commander thought Rey Skywalker’s grin would darken, it only seemed to grow wider and brighter.

“Finn,” she said, on the verge of bubbling laughter. “Tell him!”

With this, she thrust her sharp little elbow into her groom’s side. Finn, for all that he was a soldier, huffed out his breath with a small, pained sound.

“Poe,” Finn said. “Would you…”

The commander bit his lip as he regarded the couple. “Would I what?”

“Would you like to marry us?” Finn asked as he lifted his hand joined with Rey’s toward Poe.

The atmosphere of Gretna II seemed to take leave of the moon’s surface, leaving Poe Dameron without air to breathe.

“Are you… joking?” he asked.

“No!” Rey was quick to answer Poe.

“Please,” Finn said, his eyes searching within Poe’s very soul the way the soldier looked at him. “I have loved you since our first meeting.”

The commander’s knees felt unsteady, but surely that was the fault of the great distance he had travelled from Coruscant to Gretna.

“What about Rey?” Poe asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t say that I’ve loved her since we first met. I think it wasn’t really until she did that flip with the Millennium Falcon. Though I don’t think I realized how deeply I loved her until she was captured by the First Order and then—”

Rey interrupted her groom’s ramblings with a second elbow to the ribs.

“Hey!” Finn protested.

“He means to ask how _I_ feel about marrying him,” Rey said. “Though I don’t know why you don’t just ask me that, Poe.”

“Uh,” Commander Dameron said.

“I love you as Finn loves you,” she said. “Not simply because Finn loves you, but because you are kind and handsome and brave and the best damn pilot I’ve ever met, aside from myself.”

Poe laughed, for the only other option available to him would be to weep. His heart felt unstable or injured within his chest. This was truly the kind of thing to be found in holovids and certainly not in the life of an ordinary Resistance pilot.

“You’re much too young to be making declarations like that,” Poe said. “Both of you.”

“Not on Gretna II,” Finn pointed out.

“Please,” Rey said. “We know it is sudden, but you have so far resisted all of our advances. Surely, if we are wed, the three of us, you would be able to set aside your reservations.”

Poe shook his head in disbelief.

“I don’t think it’s working,” Finn said to his bride, his clever and beautiful and _dangerous_ bride.

“We should try the second plan then,” Rey said.

“I don’t know,” Finn said. “I don’t want to—”

Whatever Finn intended to say was cut short in Poe’s hearing when Rey threw herself at him in a quite undignified fashion. She was not as light as she looked, all muscle under her pretty gown. He barely caught her and, once he had her, nearly dropped her when her mouth met his.

“You’re the one who’s always telling me I need to ask before I do that sort of thing,” Finn said, and he surely looked very put upon from his tone but Poe could not see around Rey’s lovely head.

She released him from the kiss and slipped from his arms.

“I don’t think that plan went quite as we intended it,” Finn said to her.

“Then you try it,” Rey told him, and he stepped forward to put his hand on Poe’s shoulder.

“With or without you, Poe, I intended to be married today,” Finn said. “But if I can’t wed both the people that I love, I would ask this: May I kiss you?”

Poe blinks, his mouth still feeling the press of Rey’s tender lips.

“Yes,” he said, uncertain but wanting. His tongue now knew the taste of Rey Skywalker’s lips and his body and heart, if not his mind, longed to know Finn Organa’s lips as well. Finn kissed him gently, left Poe grateful for the closeness of their heights. This was exactly as perfect as Poe had always hoped, since his rescuer had removed his helmet and revealed a face too handsome to belong in the First Order. The longing within Poe’s breast felt at once relieved and intensified.

He could not live if this was the only kiss he would ever receive from Finn Organa. He simply could not continue in this life.

“You cannot wed,” Poe said, as Finn’s lips left his own.

“You cannot stop me,” Finn told him. “As much as I love you.”

“Finn,” Poe said, his hand against the soldier’s waist. He looked over his broad shoulder — Dameron’s own coat looking much more dashing on Finn Organa than it had ever had the decency to look on him — at Rey.

“Rey, please, this is not simply a matter of being in love,” Poe said. “You are too young by law and your reputation reflects upon Master Skywalker and General Organa. I promised them I would not let you fall into dishonor.”

Rey smiled at him.

“The Dameron name is quite honorable, is it not?”

Poe could not argue that it was not.

And so it was that Commander Dameron — the Resistance’s finest pilot in both skills and looks — stood between the apprentice of Jedi Master Skywalker — a girl who had lived most of her days as a scavenger on Jakku — and the ward of General Organa — a boy who had served as one of the First Order’s most promising Stormtroopers. Poe gave them both his name and his promise, but what they gave him was something far greater than that.

The runaway couple offered their love, which they were both quite ready to finally give to Poe Dameron, though nothing in their lives had taught them how to love or that it was anything but weakness and foolishness. Still, they loved and loved without reservations and despite such laws of Coruscant which said it was not fit for two so young as they to love.

Rey and Finn left the quaint Gretna II office of marriage officiation with new names and bright smiles, their arms around Poe Dameron and one another.

“I can’t believe we just did that,” Poe said. “The general is going to kill me.”

“No, she won’t,” Rey said. “She’ll be happy for you. She’ll be happy for all of us.”

This felt certain for all of them as Poe escorted his new husband and wife back to the ship they used to abscond from Coruscant.

“I’ll follow you back,” he promised.

“We’ll wait for you in orbit,” Rey said. “I won’t steer us toward Coruscant without you.”

Poe lifted her hand, appreciating the silky fabric wrapped around her wrists, and pressed his lips to her knuckles, scarred by her work as a scavenger and her training as a Jedi.

His X-Wing was only across the small settlement and the commander was eager to inform his loyal astromech of all that had transpired. He was a married man! Poe could scarcely believe it himself. He ran across the open field of green and felt as though his feet might lift off the ground with the levity his heart carried.

“BB-8!” he calls from afar, listening to curious chirps of his droid.

Then the tone changed from curious to alarmed. Commander Dameron had but a moment to glance over his shoulder at his droid’s warning when he was suddenly held frozen in place. His body held as immobile as a statue, the commander could not even cry out as something dark and familiar approached him.

Here in this green and perfect place, Lord Kylo Ren appeared like a storm cloud. His form was a black eye, a blight upon the verdant landscape. Horrible fear gripped Commander Dameron with more terrible claws even than the power which held him in place. Something cold and terrible pressed its way past his temples no matter how Poe resisted.

“How disappointing,” Kylo Ren said, his voice just as Poe remembered it.

For Lord Kylo Ren was not simply the enemy of the Resistance, but a personal adversary of Commander Dameron. Before him, on the day of his wedding, stood the man who had imprisoned him upon a First Order vessel and torn secret information from Poe’s very thoughts.

That Finn had come and spared Poe from certain death aboard that vessel in no way dulled the horror of what Kylo Ren had done to him.

“I had hoped the Skywalker reported on this backwater rock would be another,” Lord Ren said.

If Poe could, he would have spit in the villain’s face as he approached. He dragged the commander’s body forward against his will using only the dark power of the Force, if only to demonstrate his power. A hand wrapped in black leather closed around Poe’s arm and Kylo Ren moved to carry Poe away.

“No matter,” the villain said. “You will tell me where I can find Skywalker — whether you want to or not.”

Poe focused all of his resistance within his mind and thereby allowed Kylo Ren to drag his body away from the ship. He thought of Rey and Finn in orbit somewhere above his head. When the X-Wing didn’t appear soon enough they would look for him. Either they would find him in Kylo Ren’s clutches or they would not find him at all, and neither option appeared acceptable within the commander’s imagination.

He tried to put this out of his mind, but Poe was no Jedi and the thought returned again and again.

Then Poe Dameron’s imagination sprung into reality in vivid, colorful detail. Ahead of them, across the verdant grass of Gretna II, stood Poe’s wife and husband still dressed in their wedding attire but newly armed.

“Unhand my husband!” Rey Dameron shouted across the field.

“Husband?” Poe heard the villain repeat before he was thrown to the side.

The villain raised his saber, gleaming a more terrible, fiery red amongst such pastoral scenery, and brought it down towards Rey. Her own weapon met his with the roaring sound of plasma striking against the same. Their sabers burned the very air of Gretna II, spitting fat, red sparks of light and fire from the dissolute knight’s strange weapon. It hissed through the air as Kylo Ren swung at Rey again and again.

The blue light of her own weapon cast a glow over the gauzy fabric of Rey’s dress, disguising how it took on mud and dirt as she danced around the knight, daring him to strike her.

It was considered dishonorable to step between two men in a duel, Poe knew, but no sense of honor paused Finn Dameron while his young bride was in danger. A shot of bright blue rang out over the green toward Kylo Ren. He cast the shot away as though it were a pesky insect buzzing in his ear, the wave of his hand sending Finn to the ground as well.

Rey’s pretty, smiling mouth was now shaped into the harsh grimace of a warrior locked in battle.

“Finn!” Poe cried out, but his husband pushed himself up again and retrieved his blaster.

“Don’t think you can stop me,” the soldier declared.

The commander was not one to simply sit aside in the heat of battle — and this had quickly become a battle rather than a simple duel between a Jedi apprentice and a Sith Lord. Poe pulled himself to his feet and ran back to his ship to fetch his sidearm. He had thought he would have no use of it while simply retrieving a pair of his friends from dishonor. But Poe Dameron had thought many things when he had first stepped out of his ship a few hours ago.

He snatched up his sidearm, but also a pair of binding cuffs. It was not Poe Dameron’s preference to execute his enemies in the field, though he had certainly killed a great number of the First Order. He would prefer they be put on trial: a long, slow death in a cell without the honor that he knew Lord Ren would so crave for his end.

Still, if Rey cut the villain down where he stood, Poe would not shed a tear.

Poe Dameron settled his blaster rifle against his shoulder and took careful aim toward a moving target. He could see his husband Finn doing the same. They could trust in the Force, yes, as well as in Rey’s abilities but they preferred to hit Lord Ren with their blaster fire and not so much as worry a hair on their new bride’s head. Her hair had begun to fall loose from its pretty loops from the effort with which she threw her body around, moving rapidly from attack to dodge, parry to riposte.

The three of them focused intently on a single goal: the defeat of Kylo Ren. And with this, Poe pulled the trigger on his rifle; Finn fired off a series of perfectly aimed shots; Rey thrust toward her target with her full weight against the hilt of her inherited lightsaber.

Kylo Ren could not deflect them all, so he used his power to shove them away. Poe’s back hit the soft earth of Gretna II hard enough to knock the breath from his chest. The beautiful bolt of blue from his rifle ricocheted back into Poe’s ship, reducing part of an engine to smoke and slag.

“BB-8!” he cried out. “Disengage!”

He feared engine damage would cause a cascade of problems and did not want his loyal droid in danger. With a series of distressed beeps, the BB-8 descended from the burning ship and rushed to its master’s side. The urgency in his droid’s binary speech helped the commander find the energy to get back on his feet. Of course, he also had the droid at his side to lean his hand upon.

Though he had surely tried to knock her aside as he had men and blaster fire, but Rey stood firm with her weapon in hand. Lord Ren circled her warily, as a baited rancor approaches some dangerous prey, swinging his fire-spitting saber with more flash than efficacy.

“End this charade, Ren,” Rey said. “You’re simply out-numbered.”

Poe could have sworn that Rey called the lord _Ben_ when she spoke, but the very thought made his blood turn to ice within his heart. The Sith Lord Kylo Ren and General Organa dissolute son couldn’t—

“That name,” the knight said, the modulation of his dark mask unable to disguise the rage in his voice. “That name is dead.”

“As you will be shortly,” Rey spat at the knight.

When she lunged forward, Kylo Ren stepped away and did not parry. This drove him closer to Poe and further from Finn, who was already holding his blaster and ready to fire upon their common enemy.

“Wait!” Poe shouted to the crowd of them, his spouses and his greatest enemy.

“Do not interfere,” Lord Ren told him and it felt like a command, but Poe was certainly not inclined to follow the orders of one such as him.

Rey used the knight’s small distraction as an opening to strike close with her saber. Poe imagined he could smell the burning fabric of Kylo Ren’s clothing, though all he could smell was the smoke from his burning ship.

“Rey!” he called. “Can you hold him? With the Force?”

It was something Kylo Ren could do, obviously, but Poe was not familiar enough with Rey’s training to know what she was capable of — he simply assumed that she could do anything and everything. The young bride shifted her grip on her saber slowly and smiled at her opponent. The soil and green grass of Gretna II stained the lovely pale fabric of her dress and the gauzy cloth had torn where she stumbled on it and where Kylo Ren’s saber had caught fabric but not flesh.

“That would be unwise,” the knight said, before Rey threw her hand out and lifted her opponent unsteadily into the air. He struggled against some invisible hold and it was hard for Poe to contain his laughter.

Poe held up the binders for Rey to see.

“I don’t know if those will hold him any better than I can,” she said.

“Well,” Finn said, staggering to her side. “It can’t hurt.”

Kylo Ren promised them that it could and would hurt, but this did not stop Rey from bringing him down to the ground on his knees and dragging his hands out in front of him with only the power of the Force. Her arm began to quiver and then her whole body shook but still she held Lord Ren as she wanted him. Poe had the honor of closing the binders on Ren’s wrists after Finn took his saber from him.

“You wanted to meet Skywalker,” Poe said as the binders locked. “Well, you’re going to.”

He pretended as though Lord Ren looked appropriately chastised and afraid beneath his helmet, but truly had no way of knowing for certain.

During the time when Poe had hoped he might be discussing plans for a honeymoon with his new husband and wife, he instead finds he’s negotiating boarding for a disabled X-wing T-70 while said new husband and wife load a prisoner of war onto the ship upon which they stole away to Gretna II.

When he found himself aboard that ship finally, Poe Dameron and his loyal droid were met by three bare faces all tense with animosity. Apart from an ugly scar, Lord Kylo Ren possessed a face quite ordinary. Poe would not exactly call him fortunate looking, but neither would be so cruel as to call him ugly. Still, he had expected his torturer to bear a more terrifying countenance. Beneath his mask, Ren was simply a man.

“I cannot restrain our prisoner and fly the ship at the same time,” Rey stated.

“And I wouldn’t expect you to,” Poe told her.

He placed his hand upon her shoulder and regarded his bride: the fierce look she leveled upon their common enemy and the torn, muddied state of her gown. Beside her, Finn looked just as grave with his blaster leveled at the prisoner’s face and bits of green grass ground into the shoulder of the jacket which he had, although surreptitiously, borrowed from Poe. Quite aware of himself, the commander knew that he looked just as much a mess as his husband — having also been thrown to the ground by Kylo Ren’s use of the Force.

Still, it was with some light bearing in his step that Poe moved to the cockpit and ran the ship through pre-liftoff procedures. Whenever Kylo Ren attempted to speak, Rey silenced him not with the Force but with her words. Surely, the knight was planning his escape — or something worse — but he failed to do anything of much worth.

Poe used the on-board communicator to reach the General.

“I have returned with our friends Finn and Rey,” he said, attempting to restrain his voice and resist crowing out their unexpected victory. “As well as a prisoner.”

“A prisoner?” General Organa asked. “What in the name of the Force befell you on Gretna Green II that you’ve taken prisoners?”

“Not multiple prisoners, ma’am,” Poe said. “Only the one — Kylo Ren.”

“Don’t,” he heard Rey say in the background.

In her stately office on the surface of Coruscant, General Leia Organa dropped her datapad from her hands and heard it knock into her cup of unaltered caf. The black liquid spilled across her desk and down onto the pure white carpet beneath her feet where it created a growing brown stain.

“Bring him to me,” the general said, before she called her brother.

The gossips of Coruscant were quite busy discussing the return of General Leia Organa’s dissolute son after that — so busy that they went nearly a standard week of days before someone noticed that General Organa’s ward had become a Dameron instead of an Organa. It was a minor clerk in a Resistance army office who noticed first and relayed such information to their own betrothed who informed a close friend who informed their Twi’lek lover and, well, from there the story cascaded like the waterfalls of Naboo — or perhaps an avalanche on Hoth.

The waterfall (or avalanche) became more like the ever-raging sandstorms of Jakku when someone else — a tea-server at a popular café — noticed that Rey Skywalker’s name had also been changed to Dameron.

Such plural marriages were not unheard of on such a forward-thinking planet as Coruscant. Obviously, they accepted marriages of those who were within a certain range of neurological maturity for their species — for humans marriages were recognized for those older than eight and ten years. It simply was illegal to perform marriages for humans younger than five and twenty standard years. Those who married at a younger age more often than not found themselves entangled in Coruscant's arduous divorce process within a few standard years, and so it was illegal simply to spare everyone the expense and distress. Plural marriages were far more common for those species which required multiple mates to reproduce or which belonged to cultures which encouraged polygamy. Humans were not such a species.

And so the gossips discussed what a scandal it was that Poe Dameron — the son of two decorated heroes of the War against the Empire — seduced the young and vulnerable ward of his own general and the naïve, innocent apprentice of the last Jedi.

Some speculated that Commander Dameron used his military rank to compromise the young ward’s virtue — “Obviously an abuse of power. Someone who was raised by the First Order wouldn’t know how to do anything but follow orders.”

Others questioned whether the young ward had left the even younger Jedi in a certain situation from which only the good name of Dameron could spare her.

“At least,” the gossips of this opinion said, “they will have lovely children.”

There were other theories which ranged from offensive caricatures of the sort of man a remote galactic outpost like Yavin IV produced and the wickedness of scavengers to an honest belief that the three must genuinely love and care for one another after everything they had been through together. But, of course, the trio had not known each other for long and they were all so _young._ The marriage was clearly doomed to end in a very convoluted divorce.

The happy trio responded to such gossip, both the sweet and malicious, by holding hands in public and enjoying each other’s company as thoroughly as they ever had.

After a few standard days, the gossip reached the office of General Organa — who, in her defense, had been quite distracted by the return of her son after so many years. She forthrightly summoned Commander Dameron to her office, where he arrived dressed quite finely in his uniform with only a few hairs attractively out of place on his head.

“Commander, when did you intend to tell me you were married?” General Organa asked her best pilot. “When you requested leave for your honeymoon?”

“I have been meaning to do that,” Dameron said, his humor falling flat under the gaze of royalty.

“Poe,” the general said, “you were meant to bring them home safely, not deflower the both of them.”

“You know the both of them,” Poe said, beginning his defense. “Do you really think I was the seducer here?”

The general sighed and rested her hand on her desk, thinking fondly and sadly of her departed husband and herself.

“You’re right,” Leia said, shaking her head.

“Besides, I haven’t actually gotten to the deflowering,” Dameron said. “We’re waiting for the honeymoon.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Tumblr at jeffgoldblumsmulletinthe90s.tumblr.com


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